Football will be the only thing on tap moving forward at Rynearson Stadium, unlike last week when Eastern Michigan University piloted a beer-selling program.
“We will not be selling for Army this weekend and we are not anticipating selling at any other games this season,” said Greg Steiner, assistant athletics director for media relations.
Before the pilot program, Athletic Director Heather Lyke said the Athletic Department would be assessing the program based on two main criteria.
“Obviously the amount of revenue we make, the limited amount of issues we’ll have,” she said. “Those are some of the factors that I think will be affecting [future beer sales].”
According to Steiner, the beer patio grossed about $4,000 and sold 559 glasses of beer but accrued costs of roughly $7,000 including the cost of extra security and $878 for the beer.
“Because it was a pilot program profit is difficult to calculate as we had to rent a lot of the items that were required [to] setup the area. If we move forward with it in the future, the cost associated with it would be different as some of the items would be looked at for purchase rather than rental,” said Steiner.
Before the pilot, Lyke said the athletic department would definitely cover their costs the first time through, but she was still upbeat over the pilot.
“The pilot program gave us a wonderful opportunity to learn and we will take that experience to help us only make it better as we move forward. We continue to have discussions about it and will examine different business plans that could allow us to do something more permanent in the future,“ said Lyke.
Steiner considered the pilot program a success.
“Yes, the pilot was a success in the fact that it did everything we could have hoped for,” he said.
There were no known disturbances during or after the game due to the alcohol consumption.
The announced attendance at the Ball State game was 4,463, about a 2,000-person drop from their first game against Old Dominion.
